Throughout history, fences have been used to mark property boundaries, to ward off enemies, to keep livestock either in or out, for landscaping, for decorative purposes, for crowd control, and for many other purposes. Early fences generally comprised walls formed by stones stacked upon stones or wood stacked upon wood. Usually the inhabitants of an area used whatever resources were plentiful in the area whether it was stones, logs, sticks and twigs, mud, or soil and grass.
The construction of early fences was a time-consuming and laborious task. Frequently, the fences or walls constructed to protect a community would take many years and countless workers to complete. Thus, the use of fences or walls was typically confined to small areas of land. For example, a single farmer did not have the time or manpower to enclose vast amounts of land within elaborate stone or wooden fences or walls.
However, with the advent of the wire fence, both barbed and meshed, vast expanses of land could be enclosed within the fence in much less time and with considerably less manpower. Large areas of the range were staked out and fenced off to prevent livestock from intruding or escaping.
In the time since the wire fence was first used, there have been a number of improvements to fencing. We now have chain link fencing which is used both privately and commercially for security and privacy purposes. We have fences made from newly developed lightweight steel or aluminum. We now have prefabricated fencing and fencing that is constructed from modular components. Each of these types of fencing has its specific uses, advantages and disadvantages. For example, it would be impractical to use a chain link fence to enclose ranches with range land stretching over several miles and thousands of acres. Also, it would be impractical to use a low modular crowd control fence to fence in a herd of livestock. Further, it would be considered anti-social to use a barbed wire fence to enclose a small yard in a suburban residential area where no livestock is kept.
The wire fence has some very salient advantages and some equally notable disadvantages. Wire fences, particularly barbed wire fences, can be constructed rather quickly and can span long distances. Because of these advantages, wire fences are particularly suitable for range use. Such fences can be constructed in remote areas which are not accessible by road because the materials needed to construct the fence can be transported by horseback (e.g., wire strands and metal posts) or can be harvested from the area (e.g., cedar posts). In recent years, metal posts have become very popular because they have streamlined fence construction. One does not have to dig post holes or cut cedar posts. All that is needed is to drive the post into the soil and string the wire from post to post.
Despite the advances in wire fencing, there have always been certain problems which have arisen. Such fencing is frequently in need of repair and such repairs may be in locations remote from road or river access. A needed repair may be occasioned because the cattle lean against the fence bending or breaking the posts or stretching the wire. Also, in an area where man frequently climbs over the fence, the same difficulties may arise. Further, if wood posts are used, after a time they might develop ground rot and break under the stress of the taut wire.
One of the primary causes of fence failure is the stress placed on stress posts in a wire fence. A stress post may be a corner post which has wire pulling at it from two or more directions, or a post at the crest of a hill or at the bottom of a valley where the wire does not pull against the post at a substantially perpendicular angle. A stress post may also be a gate post which not only bears the stress of the tautly pulled wire but may also bear the weight of a swinging gate. There is often a great amount of stress placed on these stress posts, and thus it is not uncommon to see an entire fence line toppled to the ground because the stress post has broken off or bent over under the forces exerted upon it.
To reduce fence failure at these critical points of stress, it is necessary to brace or support the stress post to distribute the forces to more than one post or even to direct the forces into support from the ground. In the past, such bracing support has usually been bracing structure constructed on site from materials available in the area. This is extremely time consuming and requires adequate materials.
In recent years, metal support structures have been introduced, but the configurations used have not been entirely satisfactory. Frequently, they comprise many parts which must be assembled on site using several tools and more than one person. Also, this type of bracing may require that bracing members be anchored or cemented into the ground. This requires that additional materials (such as concrete) be carried to the site. Also, the configurations used frequently require that the support structure be placed outside the line of the fence and possibly onto a neighbor's property.
Another problem encountered in attempting to provide support structures for a fence is that the spacing between fence posts is often quite non-uniform. Thus, the post bracing devices have typically not extended between positions adjacent to fence posts, but rather they transmit the stress to ground. If a brace has connected two fence posts, it has most likely been constructed on-site and is not pre-fabricated or standard in configuration and size. In light of the deviations in post spacing, in the past it has simply not been feasible to produce prefabricated or standard sized fence supports which were designed to extend between fence posts and distribute stress forces. The fence support structure of this invention is designed to provide support to a fence; to be modular and yet useable on fences with non-uniform post spacing; reduce the problems now encountered in constructing bracing supports; and to overcome the inadequacies of the presently used supports.